Poor Lydia had a rough day today.

Strike One: She comes home from school looking downcast, and when I ask her what is the matter, she tells me she lost her hat. When they went to the cafeteria for their mid-afternoon snack, she explains, she put her hat on the shelf next to her coat, and when she went back after eating, the hat was gone. It’s a fairly distinctive hat that we haven’t noticed anyone else around town wearing, and she remembers clearly where she last had it and noticed it missing just a very short time later. Ergo, it seems likely that she didn’t actually “lose” it, if you know what I mean.

Strike Two: I have a couple of letters I need to get in the mail, so I tell her that if she goes to the gas-station-cum-post-office and sends them, then stops off at the store for yeast and sugar, I will make a batch of maple bars (a particular favorite of hers that she’s been asking me to make for a while). She agrees, and I give her a 100-crown bill along with the envelopes, which she tucks into her bag before setting off. About twenty minutes later she comes back, again looking downcast. When it was time to pay for the groceries, she says, she reached in to her bag and discovered that her money was gone. After a panicked search, she realized that she must have accidentally dropped the bill into the mailbox with the letters.

Strike Three: At first I tell her just to forget it and we’ll have maple bars another day, but she says that the cashier has set the yeast and sugar aside and is waiting for her to come back and pay for them. I tell her to go ask her dad for some money and to go back to the store, emphasizing that she needs to hurry, because it is now less than a half-hour before she needs to leave for her karate class, and she hasn’t yet eaten dinner. A long time passes, and I am starting to worry a little. Finally I see her through the window and breathe a sigh of relief, until she comes upstairs, you guessed it, looking downcast. She tells me that she forgot to buy a bag at the store and had to carry the groceries home in her hands. The sugar was heavy and she dropped it in a snowbank, where it disappeared and she had to dig to find it. She wasn’t wearing gloves (a bizarre vanity of hers) and excavating in the snow then walking home bare-handed has left her fingers like icicles. She has time only for a few bites of microwave pizza–she doesn’t even take her coat off while eating–before she’s back out the door on the way to karate class.

Consolation Prize: She finally gets a maple bar. I don’t think she’s ever needed one as much as she did after this day.